UPDATED: Bernie Sanders supporters won Colorado’s three seats on the Democratic National Committee, ousting longtime party leaders and Hillary Clinton loyalists.

The Democratic delegates at the state convention elected Terry Tucker, Jeri Shepherd and Mike Hamrick, the party announced late Monday. Sanders supporters pushed the slate and worked to get them elected at the party confab Saturday in Loveland, though the campaign said it didn’t officially endorse them.

The selections give party outsiders a foothold in the state and national Democratic leadership amid concerns about bias toward Clinton and other establishment candidates. Sanders’ strong showing at precinct and county level party meetings helped him stack the deck at the state convention — where he won the straw poll and claimed a majority of the delegates.

But his big showing does little to help with superdelegates in the 2016 election. The new DNC members will take office the day after the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia.

Former state Sen. Josh Penry will serve as Marco Rubio’s campaign chairman in Colorado.

UPDATED: Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is starting to form his team in Colorado.

The campaign announced that Josh Penry, a former state Senate GOP leader, will serve as Rubio’s state chairman. The volunteer role will put him in charge of building an organization to support Rubio’s 2016 ahead of the Colorado caucuses in March.

In a statement released by the campaign, Penry called Rubio a “generational leader who has a bold vision for the 21st century.”

The move to name a state team — which his rivals are doing as well — also demonstrates a focus past the primary, Penry said in an interview.

“There are a lot of states before Colorado in the primary orbit but they are positioning their campaign to go the distance,” he said. “They are not just thinking primaries — they are thinking how do you win a general election.”

In an effort to expand voting opportunities for Coloradans, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Colorado Democratic Party announced Mike Weissman as state director of the Colorado Voter Expansion Project Thursday morning.

“Colorado has some of the most pro-voter election laws in the country, and I look forward to helping make sure that Coloradans can exercise their rights under these laws this November,” he said, in a release.

Mike Weissman (Provided by CDP)

Rick Palacio, the chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, touted the reformation of the state’s electoral laws, saying they made it easier for Coloradans to vote last year. In 2013, 300,000 more people voted than in 2011, thanks in part to a law passed by Colorado legislators requiring ballots be mailed to voters.

“Last year, the Colorado General Assembly approved the broadest modernization of our election laws in many years,” Palacio said, in a release. “A bipartisan group of county clerks — Colorado’s election administrators — supported these changes. In 2014 it will be easier for Coloradans to register to vote and to cast a ballot than ever before.”

A graduate of the University of Colorado law school, Weismann is a member of the Colorado bar and has worked and volunteered in Democratic politics since 2004, including serving as a campaign manager for his partner Colorado Senate President Morgan Carroll.

Other speakers at the event include two McKenna partners, David Fine, the former city attorney for Denver, and Stefan Passantino, former national counsel for Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, and former Congressman David Skaggs of Boulder.

The event begins with breakfast and registration at 8:30 a.m., while the program is from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Sheraton Denver downtown hotel’s Silver Room.

What’s more certain in the new year for Coloradans than a Denver Broncos loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday? Political ads.

Among a handful of swing states nationwide in the presidential election, Colorado is sure to receive an overflow of ads on both the airwaves and TV screens — something that residents in early caucus and primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have experienced for months.

American Crossroads, a Republican 527 group, and the Democratic National Committee have already made Colorado one of the biggest television advertisement battlegrounds, according to a Washington Post graphic tracking weekly and total ad spending for the 2012 presidential race by candidate, PAC and interest groups.

First, Karl Rove’s group went up today with an ad buy of $50,000 ripping the president. And now the Democratic National Committee has responded with a Spanish language campaign spot blaming Republicans that debuts tomorrow in Denver. The amount of the buy is unknown.

President Barack Obama holds up his American Jobs Act bill on Sept. 27, 2011, during his speech at Lincoln High School. Obama will return to Denver in late October for a campaign stop.

Sources close to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign say he will visit Denver the week of Oct. 24, for a reception and discussion possibly at the Ritchie Center on the campus of the University of Denver.

Details of the visit have yet to be finalized, but sources say the event will be sponsored by Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee.

The ad slams Republicans for saying “no” to Obama’s policies and the American Jobs Act. It’s also set to air in Las Vegas, a move that highlights the importance of the Latino vote in these Western cities with large populations.

WASHINGTON — Continuing what is an aggressive sell on President Barack Obama’s jobs plan of $450 billion in new stimulus, Democrats launched TV ads Monday in Spanish aimed at Hispanic voters in Colorado and other states with influential Latino populations.

“The Republican Party is offering no new solutions for Hispanics — they simply want to double down on the failed policies that brought our economy to the brink of a depression and hurt millions of American families, including far too many Latinos,” a Democratic National Committee spokesman said in a statement.

The Spanish ad is titled “Unete por Mas Trabajos” or “Unite for More Jobs.” It shows the president delivering his jobs speech to Congress Sept. 8, but then a voice in Spanish describes how the plan will add $15 billion in construction jobs and $50 billion in investments in transportation infrastructure to boost the construction industry that employs 2.77 million Hispanics.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.